Speaking Equestrian Slang

The most popular subjects on this blog are about equestrian terminology and the language of the sport. I call it “Horse Speak”. Among the most common Google searches that bring people here are phrases like “show jumping lingo”, “equestrian terminology” and “equestrian slang”. The second-most frequently read post in the history of this blog is “The Language Barrier of Equestrian Sport”. It was prompted by confusion,  during the Olympics, between the show jumping phase of the three-day event and the sport of show jumping.

 Although this blog is about media relations for show jumping, the word “equestrian” itself creates one of the many terminology challenges associated with that sport. Another of the most frequently-viewed posts on this blog, “The Trouble With the Word Equestrian”, talked about that.

Never were both of these terminology problems more clear than during, and after, the Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event, which was held recently. When three-day eventers and their followers talk about this event, they call it simply “Rolex”. Television commentators during last year’s Olympics often said “this was his Rolex horse”, as if everyone knows exactly what that means. Name recognition is a good thing for any sponsor. But like any good thing, it can go too far. A Rolex is a watch. It is not a place. You can’t go to Rolex. It is not, in itself, a special event. Rolex, the watch company, also sponsors the show jumping and dressage World Cup Finals. Those two events were held close to the same date as the Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event. Rolex also sponsors the International Equestrian Federation World Rider Rankings. So, what is “Rolex” when you use that word alone? To the listener or reader, it is a watch. And singling out a three-day event as “Rolex”, with no further description in the name, does a disservice to Rolex’s other sponsorship. Statements like “I’m going to Rolex”, or “This is my first Rolex”, or “This is my Rolex horse” make no sense in plain English. They are simply bad speaking practice if the sport ever wants to be media-friendly. And, also, bad practice if they want to give their sponsor fair value for all the ways they spread their money around different equestrian sports.

But the terminology problems surrounding the Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event don’t end there. NBC promoted their television coverage of it during the Kentucky Derby broadcast. They called it the “Rolex Kentucky Equestrian Championship”. What is an “equestrian championship”? There are at least ten diverse equestrian sports.  In my opinion, however, this was not NBC’s fault. They were left with little choice. A large part of good media relations is branding and image-making. When the International Equestrian Federation re-branded the official name of the three-day event as “eventing”, it was big branding blunder. No member of the public could be expected to understand what “eventing” is. Therefore, no journalist is likely to use the term. “Eventing” sounds like an activity like party-hopping. But, you would go from one special event to another.

When I suggested on a social networking site that NBC’s naming of the Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event was misleading, it became clear that the three-day eventers in the group are a defensive lot. I got the usual response from one member who thought NBC had to “dumb it down” for the ordinary people. I’ve also blogged before about why the equestrian community thinks they’re smarter than people who don’t understand their language. In actual fact, I think it’s smarter, not dumber, to know that equestrian isn’t the name of a single sport, to know that “eventing” isn’t actually a word, and to know that a Rolex is a watch.

Showing the Horse or Competing?

The equestrian community reacted with outrage recently to Olympic media coverage that stated riders are not athletes. Some journalists declared that “the horse did all the work” and “the Olympics are for human athletes”. Based on that opinion, they rationalized that equestrian sport should not be part of the Olympic Games.

 

However, riders don’t realize that they perpetuate that image with their terminology. It is not unusual to hear a rider say, in an interview, that he is “showing the horse”. I heard riders at the Olympic Games tell journalists, “I haven’t shown him for amonth” or “This is the last time I will show him for a while”. If he or she is simply “showing the horse”, then why is he or she an athlete? How can those journalists be blamed for having that, arguably, wrong impression?

 

The term “showing the horse” is really most accurate when talking about line classes, where a horseman stands the horse to show him properly to the judges. This takes skill, but it doesn’t make that horseman an athlete. The term was not intended for grand prix and Olympic show jumping.

 

Athletes in other sports “compete”. Show jumpers “show the horse”. Which one sounds more like an athlete to you?

The Language Barrier of Equestrian Sport

I have frequently said that terminology is one of the biggest media relations hurdles for equestrian sport. As I write this, the Olympic Games are underway and with three equestrian disciplines being contested, the terminology problem is magnified three-fold.

 

Several months ago I made a post called “The Trouble With the Word Equestrian”. Good examples of the misunderstandings surrounding that word always surface during the Olympics.

 

The printed information at the Games, and the terminology used, is especially important this time because most of the major media is in Beijing and the equestrian events are in Hong Kong.

 

The IOC, national Olympic committees and Olympic organizing committees have, historically, made little distinction between the three equestrian sports or disciplines, using the word “equestrian” as a sweeping description for three very different sports. Although this blog is about media relations for show jumping, terminology from one of the other equestrian disciplines has instigated some of the media confusion at the current Olympic Games.

 

What used to be known as the three-day event is now known as “eventing”. This new word is a common noun turned into a verb that doesn’t actually exist in the English language. That would be fine if it wasn’t so close to a word that is used in every sport. Every competition held at the Olympics is an event. Therefore, when organizers made the Olympic schedule they had columns for day, time, sport and event. For the first phase of “eventing” they used “equestrian” for sport and “team dressage” for event. But there is already a team dressage event coming later in the Games. For the third phase they did the same but used “stadium jumping” in the event column. The stadium jumping event is, arguably, the biggest draw of Olympic equestrian sports. Nowhere did the word “eventing” appear because, how can one event, of many, be “eventing”? Television listings were taken from the same official information.

 

Understandably, some journalists took it to mean that show jumpers would be competing on the day of the three-day event’s show jumping phase. Some even published in advance that certain well-know riders would be competing that day. This was not the fault of the newspaper reporters. Some television viewers may have been very disappointed and blamed the media.

 

In addition, some journalists who looked at results afterwards were led to believe that the riders they had hoped to follow had failed to compete. Only equestrian sport “insiders” would be able too grasp the meaning of that schedule.

 

Would sport organizations allow such confusion between the very diverse sports that fall in the aquatics category? Unlikely. Would a diver be outraged if the media mistook him or her for a synchronized swimmer or vice versa? Probably. There are many sports that are played with a ball, but they don’t call them all “ball” and leave it to the reader to figure out whether athletes will kick the ball, hit it, or throw it.

 

Why is this a media relations matter? Because a sport cannot be covered accurately if it cannot be easily understood. While cynics might disagree, good journalists want very much to be accurate. If they aren’t confident they can be and there are over 300 sports to cover at the Games, they will more than likely decide to take a pass on the confusing one.

Show or Tournament?

Words create pictures and images. Sometimes words that mean one thing to one group of people means something entirely different to the general population.

Just like the word “equestrian” has multiple meanings, as illustrated in my last post, many other common show jumping terms do not create an accurate picture in a listener’s or reader’s mind. 

Show jumping is an Olympic sport. It is a professional sport. Though some of the uninitiated don’t think so, show jumping riders are athletes. Why then would Olympic-calibre and/or professional competition be called a “show”?

Riders start out, usually as children, competing at horse shows. In times gone by, most of these included competitions in which horses were judged only for their appearance. The latter is what a member of the general public would likely picture when they hear the words “horse show”. They would picture something similar to a dog show. However, no other Olympic sport or professional sport uses the world “show” to describe their competitions. Afterall, they are competitions, not shows. If these riders are athletes, why are they deemed to be “showing the horse”.

Unfortunately, when they reach the Olympic level, it is still common for riders to use the terminology with which they grew up. Hence, they call their competitions “shows”. Even worse, from a marketing standpoint, many competitions have official names that include the words “horse show”.

This is just another example of terminology that does not depict the sport to be what it truly is. As a result it can be confusing to the media and the general public.

Media relations is partly image-making. Terminology is a big part of that. 

The Trouble With the Word “Equestrian”

Terminology makes getting good media coverage difficult in many subject areas. Equestrian sport is one of the most problematic subjects when it comes to language. Those involved in the sport have a lingo of their own. It is well understood by them. Many of them grow up speaking it. It is not well understood by the general public, making it difficult to attract new fans, new participants, and those ever-important sponsors.

This problem can easily be overcome. There are plain-English, replacement terms, for almost every bit of “lingo” that is commonly used in the sport.

Surprisingly, however, one of the most problematic words is “equestrian”. There are a lot of different sports that can be accurately described with this adjective. However, the word is most commonly associated with the three English-riding Olympic equestrian sports. But, the dictionary defines equestrian as “having to do with horses”. That opens up a wide variety of ways in which it can be used.

One of the problems is that it is often used as if it is one sport. A good example is the recent broadcast of an equestrian three-day event on a major American television network. They promoted this broadcast as “equestrian championships”. This was particularly problematic because the equestrian sport involved had received some disturbingly negative coverage shortly before this broadcast in one of the world’s largest newspapers. Therefore, it causes all equestrian sport to be hurt by the negative publicity of one. It is a good illustration of how poor terminology can actually cause “bad press”.

Something similar happened in a Canadian newspaper recently, when they reported that Canadian riders were going to compete in the “Equestrian World Cup”. There are World Cups in several equestrian sports. This was not detrimental publicity, but a good example of confusion that can be caused by terminology that is not clear.

It’s easy to see how the naming of the U.S. television broadcast happened. The equestrian sport in question uses a name that is not sufficiently descriptive for the public or journalists to understand. What was formerly the equestrian “three-day event” (also not sufficiently descriptive, as events that are three days in length take place in almost every sport) or “horse trials” (somewhat better) has undergone a name change to “eventing”. The network was clearly trying to avoid the use of this noun-turned-verb that offers no description of what is going to take place.

But, media relations for show jumping is the subject of this blog. The choice of the American network is just offered as an example of how problematic the word “equestrian” can be.

One way to overcome the problem would be to have more descriptive names for each of the sports that fall into the “equestrian” catagory. “Equestrian jumping” or ”horse jumping” would be an improvement over ”show jumping”.

Clear, plain-English terms make anything easier to understand. There will be many future posts on improving the lingo of this sport to make it more media-friendly.